Intel microcode for Skylake/Cascade Lake CPUs can cause stability issues
Issue
- My system hangs on early boot.
- CPUs become indicted by hardware (offline and no longer accessible once the system comes back up)
- What plans does Red Hat have to either document something or replace the affected packages?
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux, all versions on affected hardware
- Certain Intel Skylake/Cascade Lake CPU types (see Diagnostics section for details):
- cpu family 6, model 85 (in hex: 55), stepping 04, problematic microcode version 0x2006a08
- cpu family 6, model 85 (in hex: 55), stepping 06, problematic microcode version 0x4003003
- cpu family 6, model 85 (in hex: 55), stepping 07, problematic microcode version 0x5003003
- Packages with the microcode version having the issue:
- microcode_ctl-20200609-2.20201027.1.el8_3.x86_64 and later (released in rhel8.3.z)
- microcode_ctl-20191115-4.20201112.1.el8_2.x86_64 and later (released in rhel8.2 EUS/E4S/TUS/AUS)
- microcode_ctl-20180807a-2.20201112.1.el8_0.x86_64 and later (released in rhel8.0 E4S)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-73.2.el7_9.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.9.z stream)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-53.13.el7_7.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.7 EUS/E4S/TUS/AUS)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-47.18.el7_6.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.6 EUS/TUS/AUS)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-22.36.el7_4.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.4 E4S/TUS/AUS)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-16.37.el7_3.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.3 E4S/TUS/AUS)
- microcode_ctl-2.1-12.34.el7_2.x86_64 and later (released in rhel7.2 AUS)
- microcode_ctl-1.17-33.31.el6_10.x86_64 and later (released in rhel6.10.z)
- microcode_ctl-1.17-19.32.el6_6.x86_64 and later (released in rhel6.6 AUS)
- microcode_ctl-1.17-17.34.el6_5.x86_64 and later (released in rhel6.5 AUS)
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